Cruise Lines Juggle Trips After Hurricanes

CRUISES

Cruise lines have been doing a bit of rescheduling in the aftermath of recent hurricanes that battered popular Caribbean cruise ports.

Hurricane Marilyn barreled through St. Thomas in mid-September. A week earlier, Hurricane Luis damaged St. Maarten and Antigua.

At least a dozen ships have suspended visits to the three storm-swept islands and have substituted ports of call.

The lines most affected are Celebrity, Carnival, Dolphin, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean, all of which have ships in the Caribbean year-round.

Carnival, with the region's biggest cruise presence, has revised the itineraries of four ships. For example, the Sensation, which normally alternates eastern and western Caribbean cruises, is sailing only to the western Caribbean.

Celebrity's Zenith, which continues to alternate its three-port eastern and western itineraries, is adding an overnight stay in San Juan in place of St. Thomas and visiting Torpola instead of St. Maarten.

Several ships, including Norwegian's Windward and Norway and Royal Caribbean's Sovereign and Monarch of the Seas, have switched St. Thomas with St. Croix.

As complicated as the situation seems, it might have been worse. The winter Caribbean season doesn't get into full swing until early November, not long before hurricane season ends. So the bulk of the cruise fleet, which won't reposition to Caribbean waters until completing cruises in Bermuda, Alaska and Europe, remains unaffected.

However, passengers planning to sail the Caribbean in the coming weeks understandably may be concerned. "We've gotten a lot of questions, like `Where am I going?'" said Carnival spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz.

Speaking for the world's biggest cruise line, Micky Arison, chairman and CEO of Carnival, said he was not aware of a single cancellation because of the rearranged itineraries.

Indeed, most passengers booked on ships with altered itineraries find the situation "to be only a minor inconvenience," said Larry Fishkin, president of The Cruise Line in Miami. "The ship itself is one of the best destinations."

Similarly, Dorothy Reminick, a travel agent in Jupiter, said she has heard of no negatives from her clients.

Actually, cruise passengers are luckier than most who planned vacations to the affected islands. Untold numbers of tourists who planned land-based vacations had to rethink their plans; some had to skip vacations altogether. Cruise passengers have it easier: They travel to the same number of ports, the cruise lines do all the rescheduling, they still have the ship to enjoy.

In choosing alternative ports, the lines have tried to select islands similar to those originally scheduled.

"It's still one of the Virgin Islands for instance," said de la Cruz of Carnival, a line that originally replaced St. Thomas with Tortola, but later switched to St. Croix. "We also want islands that have the most for our guests to do."

In the Caribbean, the choices are almost infinite. "The Caribbean chain from Trinidad to the tip of Cuba is the approximate distance of New York to Houston," stretching more than 2,000 miles, Fishkin said.

And although the islands that are now off-limits are among the most popular cruise destinations, they represent only a small fraction of the more than 30 Caribbean islands that are frequented by cruise ships. (There are more than 5,000 islands dotting the Caribbean Sea.)

No one is more eager than the lines to go back to business as usual.

"We really want to get back into the eastern Caribbean as soon as possible, for a variety of reasons," de la Cruz said. "Taking tourists back will help recovery efforts on the affected islands, which are reliant on tourism and need tourist dollars."

In the meantime, St. Croix stands to benefit from its sudden 15 minutes of fame. The largest and most southerly of the U.S. Virgin Islands had been bypassed by cruise ships after an outbreak of violence against tourists a number of years ago. Today it offers much to be enjoyed. Frederiksted, one of its main ports, is expected to accept a full schedule of cruise ships through October.

For better or worse, the changes are temporary, and lines are projecting their plans only a few weeks at a time. The new itineraries, however, are expected to remain in effect for about four weeks, as cruise lines continue to re-evaluate the situation.

A final word: Even the changes are subject to change, so be sure to contact your travel agent or the cruise line if you have any questions.